Yesterday, when the U.S. delegation at UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland organised an event promoting fossil fuels, the reaction was fierce – and predictable.

It was the second year in a row the U.S. has staged such an event at the annual climate gathering setting the rules of the Paris Climate Agreement, staying true to the headline message coming from the White House that climate change is a hoax and the agreement will hinder economic growth.

But behind the scenes, delegates from the U.S. government are sounding a different tone. Speaking at a “innovation in coal and natural gas” event on the sidelines of the summit, Preston Wells Griffith, the deputy assistant secretary for international affairs at the U.S. Department of Energy, told the audience that “alarmism should not silence realism.” Continue Reading →

It’s diamond season. Almost 40 percent of American engagements happen between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, with Christmas the most popular day to pop the question – and hand over a sparkly piece of ice. Jewelry stores do at least double their usual monthly sales in December.

Since at least the late 1800s, with the discovery of huge diamond mines in South Africa, people have treasured these dazzling gems. The beauty and splendor of diamonds goes well beyond the surface. Like a diamond hunter digging in an underground mine, one must look deeper to their atomic characteristics to understand what sets these stones apart – and what makes them valuable not just for romantics but also for scientists.

When mined from the earth, diamonds look like cloudy rocks before they’re cut and polished. Their chemical nature and structure were unknown for centuries. It was Isaac Newton’s experiments in the 1600s that first suggested diamonds are made up of the fourth-most abundant element, carbon. Continue Reading →

Rare earth metals are used in solar panels and wind turbines—as well as electric cars and consumer electronics. We don’t recycle them, and there’s not enough to meet growing demand.

A new scientific study supported by the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure warns that the renewable energy industry could be about to face a fundamental obstacle: shortages in the supply of rare metals.

To meet greenhouse gas emission reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, renewable energy production has to scale up fast. This means that global production of several rare earth minerals used in solar panels and wind turbines—especially neodymium, terbium, indium, dysprosium, and praseodymium—must grow twelvefold by 2050.

But according to the new study by Dutch energy systems company Metabolic, the “current global supply of several critical metals is insufficient to transition to a renewable energy system.” Continue Reading →

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece’s Public Power Corp. (PPC) (DEHr.AT) will not cut the electricity supply to Larco before the start of the new year as the government works on a plan to avert a closure of Europe’s biggest nickel producer, the utility said late on Wednesday.

Larco, which is 55 percent owned by the Greek state, owes about 280 million euros ($319 million) in unpaid electricity bills to state-controlled power utility PPC, also a minority shareholder in the company.

PPC said on Wednesday it will continue to supply Larco with electricity until the end of the year after the Greek energy ministry intervened. Continue Reading →

BENGALURU/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Anglo American said on Tuesday its overall production will rise by more than previously expected between 2018 and 2021, while this year’s costs are forecast to be lower.

Anglo said in an update to investors and analysts that 2018 production will be 2 percent higher than its previous forecast, driven by increases in copper, diamonds and platinum group metals, while costs will be 5 percent below earlier guidance.

The company, whose products also include coal, nickel and iron ore said it expected a 3 percent rise in production in 2019 and a further 5 percent boost in both 2020 and 2021, lifting its share price, which was one of the biggest gainers on London’s blue chip index. Continue Reading →

Democratic Republic of Congo state mining company Gecamines said it renegotiated a joint venture with Eurasian Resources Group Sarl to boost its share of revenue from the project.

It’s the second time this year the company has remodeled agreements with other firms, after ending a dispute with Glencore Plc in June over one of Congo’s biggest copper and cobalt mines. Gecamines Chairman Albert Yuma has repeatedly criticized existing partnerships as too generous to foreign investors.

Gecamines boosted its stake in ERG subsidiary Boss Mining SPRL, a copper and cobalt producer, to 49 percent from 30 percent under the rearranged accord, the Lubumbashi-based company said in a statement on Monday. ERG also converted into equity more than $1.5 billion of intra-group loans granted to Boss Mining, it said. Continue Reading →

Harmony Gold and its partner signed an agreement with the Papua New Guinea government to clear the way to secure a mining permit by the middle of 2019 to start the Wafi-Golpu copper and gold mine.

Harmony and its partner, Australia’s Newcrest Mining, released an updated feasibility study in March 2018 showing the cost to bring the mine into commercial production would be about $2.8bn. The mine would produce an average 202,000oz of gold and 130,000 tons of copper a year.

Securing the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the companies and the Papua New Guinea government gives a solid timeframe for the work that needs to happen to complete the permitting process and result in the issuance of a special mining lease by the end of June 2019. Continue Reading →

Franco-Nevada Corp. is worldwide, but the company still has royalties on gold produced at major mines in Nevada. “Nevada is our middle name,” said Franco-Nevada CEO David Harquail, who described Nevada’s mining industry as “rock solid. It’s been the bedrock of the gold industry. You can make mines in Nevada you can’t anywhere else.”

He predicts Nevada will continue to be a preferred jurisdiction for the industry. Harquail pointed to Barrick Gold Corp.’s Goldrush and Fourmile projects and Newmont Mining Corp.’s operations as examples of why Nevada will still be a mining stronghold.

Franco-Nevada doesn’t have royalties or assets tied with Barrick’s latest projects, but the company does have a royalty on the South Arturo Mine Barrick operates near the Goldstrike Mine north of Carlin. Barrick is 60 percent owner of South Arturo, and Premier Gold Mines Ltd. owns 40 percent. Continue Reading →

Slowing global growth and uncertainty about the chance of a permanent settlement in the China v U.S. trade war might not prevent the development of a copper shortage and a higher price for the worlds most important industrial metal.

Hints of copper entering a period of short supply can be seen in the collapse of stockpiles of the metal held in the warehouses of commodity exchanges. At the London Metal Exchange the copper stockpile has dropped to a five-year low of 124,450 tons, less than half the 380,000 tons held in February.

The copper decline was a feature of a briefing delivered to investors last week by Ivan Glasenberg, chief executive of the big commodity trading and mining company, Glencore. He said inventories of metals such as copper and zinc had dropped to near record lows. Continue Reading →

Russia’s metals and mining major Norilsk Nickel plans to invest more than $12bn in production development over the next five years in order to boost production volumes, the company’s chief executive officer Vladimir Potanin said Monday.

The world’s largest producer of palladium, and one of the leading producers of nickel, platinum and copper, thus signalled a change of strategy from flat output to growth amid stronger global demand for its products.

“We are implementing a rather unprecedented investment programme: we are investing more than $12 billion in production development in the next five years,” Mr Potanin told Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in a meeting, according to the Kremlin transcript. Continue Reading →

Back in 1987, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa — then a 34-year-old labor union leader — led 300,000 black miners in a strike that symbolized resistance to the apartheid regime. Now, striking gold workers face a less politically charged battle, but one they can’t win.

The nation’s 130-year-old gold industry — which has produced half the bullion ever mined on earth — is locked in the final stages of a decades-long death spiral. Most of South Africa’s gold mines are unprofitable at current prices.

Dwindling output has cut gold’s contribution to little more than 1 percent of the South African economy, down from 3.8 percent in 1993 — the year before Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress won the country’s first democratic elections. While the industry’s demise won’t reverberate in the way it once would have, the mines minister has criticized Gold Fields Ltd.’s plan to cut jobs as the ruling ANC seeks to shore up its base before elections next year. Continue Reading →

LONDON (Reuters) – The U.S. International Trade Commission has just slapped anti-dumping duties on imports of Chinese common aluminium alloy sheet. It’s another brick in the trade wall being erected by the Trump administration as it seeks to insulate domestic manufacturers from the flood of what it deems unfairly subsidised Chinese products.

U.S. imports of Chinese alloy sheet surged by 731 percent between 2007 and 2017, with Chinese product accounting for nearly 40 percent of total imports last year, according to the U.S. Aluminum Association.

The latest action builds on similar penal duties imposed on imports of Chinese foil and the broader “Section 232” tariffs on all imports of aluminium and steel. However, China’s exports of aluminium products are still accelerating, with outbound flows on track to set a new record this year. Continue Reading →

SYDNEY — A small island has found itself caught in the escalating battle for influence in the South Pacific. On both economic and diplomatic fronts, Papua New Guinea’s autonomous region of Bougainville has become a key piece in the game between Beijing, on one side, and the U.S. and its allies on the other.

With Bougainville holding one of the world’s largest untapped deposits of copper, Chinese and Western companies are weighing the prospects for reopening its Panguna copper mine — closed since a vicious civil war broke out in 1989. The island is also set to hold an independence referendum on June 15, potentially creating a new country that could vote in international forums such as the United Nations.

John Momis, president of the Autonomous Bougainville Government, told the Nikkei Asian Review that Chinese businesspeople raised the matter of investing in the mine on a visit to PNG ahead of last month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation in the capital, Port Moresby. Continue Reading →

LAUNCESTON, Australia (Reuters) – It’s not shaping up as a merry Christmas for coal exporters to Asia as the region’s top buyers, China and India, pull back from the recent trend of strong imports.

The Chinese authorities appear to be making good on a commitment to try and limit the country’s imports of the polluting fuel to levels the same as 2017. The restrictions have led to a sharp drop in the daily import of coal so far in December, according to vessel-tracking and port data compiled by Refinitiv.

Seaborne imports in the first five days of the month stood at 1.5 million tonnes, or a daily rate of just 300,000 tonnes. This compares to total seaborne imports of 226.2 million tonnes in the first 11 months of 2018, a daily rate of about 677,000 tonnes. Continue Reading →

BOGOTA, Dec 10 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A rise in small-scale illegal gold mining is destroying swathes of the Amazon rainforest, according to research released on Monday that maps the scale of the damage for the first time.

Researchers used satellite imagery and government data to identify at least 2,312 illegal mining sites across six countries in South America – Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Venezuela.

The maps show the spread and scale of illegal mining and were produced by the Amazon Socio-environmental, Geo-referenced Information Project (RAISG), which brings together a network of nonprofit environmental groups in the Amazon. Continue Reading →